The Universe Doesn't Care. (Part 1)

This is not a city where air conditionning in houses is the norm. Summer is generally a temperate zone. Warm days. Cool nights. Air conditionning optional.

This summer is above the norm. Hot days. Warm nights. Oh where oh where is the air conditionning?

Sleep becomes fragmented snippets of restful bliss interspersed with restless tossing in the heat. No matter how many fans are blowing, there just isn't enough coolness to slip into slumbering dreamland. And the constant whirring of the fan! Some call it white noise. I call it annoying. The continuous hum that overrides thinking, meditating, relaxing, challenges me to become still. To feel my breath. To feel my essence beating within me.

I wasn't sure what I would write about this morning. Made a choice to go through my emails first. And there was an email from a friend talking about choices. The one's she's made and how life never reveals where it's going to take us until the moment it happens.

Normally, I respond to emails after I've written. This morning, I made a different choice. In that process, I cleared the way to thinking about choices some more.

Recently, I listened to a woman speak about life and God and love and living. She said, "The universe doesn't care." In her presentation she talked about how in the Universe, whether our belief structure be centered on God, Buddha, Mohammed, or any other Divinity, there wasn't some divine master keeping score of our every choice, writing them down in a two-column list headed: Good Choices/Bad Choices. He or She wasn't up there directing the stars into alignment when we performed according to plan, or causing some cataclysmic cosmic disaster to 'pay back' some minor, or major, transgression we had perpetrated in the dark.

The universe doesn't care. It's busy doing it's thing. Being the all it is meant to be.

For me, it was a wildly exciting thought. The issue isn't "why does this happen to me?". The issue is, are the choices I'm making creating more of what I want in my life or less? Is this choice, in this moment, in alignment with my values, beliefs, principles? Can I live with the consequences of this choice? Is it important?

Now some choices are simple. My coffee in the morning is an easy one. The choice to meet a man for dinner tonight, that's easy too. A date is an invitation to explore unknown territory. To get to know someone so that the next date becomes a possibility -- or not. It's the choice we make after the date. Picking November 3 as my target date to have my next book completed is a choice. The choices I make between now and then will determine my success. The choice is always mine. To open doors. To close them. To step into the unknown. To retreat to familiar territory. To leap into the void. To cling in fearful trepidation to the past. The choice is mine.

In August of 1998 I met a man. I met a hundred men that year, but this particular man had a profound, and at times terrifying, affect on my life. The universe didn't put him in my path. A business meeting put him in my path. In that first encounter, my choice was to meet him, greet him.... and then to become intriqued by him. With each subsequent choice I made to stay intriqued by him, I stepped further and further into the lair of his deceit.

As time moved on and I lost sight of myself, I became less and less able to make healthy choices. Every choice I made began with the thought, what will he think, do, say? Every thought I had was predicated upon his voice in my head repeating his lies, his incantations that he held all the answers. I began to believe I was powerless to make my own choices. As I began to believe in my own powerlessness, it became true. I lost my belief in my ability to make my own choices. In my fear and turmoil, I lost my understanding of who I am as I fell into my fear that he was all that I was meant to be and have and become in this world.

At the end of that encounter, my choice was simple: To live. without fear. Without shame. Without sorrow and regret clouding my vision of the possibilities of my life in freedom. To be free from the past, from fear, from the belief that he was all I deserved, I had to make choices that loved me, supported me, nourished me and celebrated my life away from abuse.

No matter my choices in that relationship, I never ever deserved to be abused. No one deserves abuse. If I were to believe that God determined what I happened to me, then I'd have to believe he wanted me to be abused while I was in that relationship. And that's just not true.

The Universe doesn't care and God's busy taking care of the universe.

I have to care. About me. About my life. About what I'm doing. Where I'm going. Who I'm going with. I have to care enough about me to make choices that celebrate my divinity, my magnificence, my life.

The universe doesn't care. It simply is.

Just as I am. I am a spiritual being on the incredible journey of my lifetime. Free to make choices that support me, love me, honour me, celebrate me. Or not.

The choice is mine. How I live my life is up to me. In spirit-driven freedom, or soul-searching angst. My choice! My life! My freedom to be me!

May you have a spirited day filled with choices that celebrate the magnificence of you.


Note: This is Part 1 of The Universe Doesn't Care. Check back tomorrow for Part 2 where I talk about how my choices while in an abusive relationship created the abuse in my life. Never deserved it. But I did create what I feared by the choices I made.